Zomerlandschap met schapenherder bij boerderij 1751 - 1799

Jacob Cats created this summer landscape with a shepherd and farm using pen and gray ink, and gray wash. The artist has deployed a range of techniques to build up an image of great tonal complexity with a restricted palette, achieving subtle light effects. What is immediately apparent is that this work sits at an interesting crossroads of the handmade and the reproducible. It is a drawing on paper, and yet it has the crisp, linear quality you might expect from a print. This is due to Cats’s confident and delicate line work, which lends the piece its sense of immediacy and clarity. Given the period in which this was made, it is important to consider that this work was produced for a market that placed a great deal of value on skilled hand work, and on images of rural labor that romanticized the lives of workers. Looking at this piece, we are reminded that the value of art lies not only in its subject matter, but also in the labor, skill, and material decisions that underpin its creation.